La Maison du Chocolat

Why is this must-see house of chocolate so famous?

Here is an address located less than 200 meters from the Relais Madeleine which deserves to be visited, whether you are gourmet or just want to bring back an iconic gift of French pastry. Frequented by Jeanne Moreau, Carole Bouquet, and many others, this maison was founded forty years ago by Robert Linxe, whom Jean-Paul Aron called the "ganache wizard".

It was his ganaches that gave this maison, so clearly positioned on luxury, its reputation. Today, pastry chef Nicolas Cloiseau, awarded as best worker of France in 2007, has maintained and prolonged the creativity and talent of the maison with a range of timeless products, as well as by creating, as a fashion designer, 4 collections per year. And the store? A muted brown decor, a distinguished welcome, and a refined product design, presentation, and packaging. If you like luxury, you will feel right at home.

29 piece Assortment - €31 and 63 piece Assortment - €66Of course, there are praline chocolates, truffles, candied chestnuts, candied oranges, and other treats, as well as pastries like macaroons with a ganache that comes in 11 different flavors and recently, delicious eclairs. Nicolas Cloiseau does not twiddle his thumbs when looking for a flavor. For the Salvador, he tested all varieties of raspberries, until he found the least acidic and the most fruity. The same went for the blackcurrant, whose flavor isn't easy to incorporate. He finally found the solution in Burgundy: Harvested in winter, blackcurrant buds are crushed to make "blackcurrant pepper", which can then be used as an infusion mixed with a fruit puree. The flavors intensely unfold and the component is stablee de fruits. Les saveurs se déploient avec intensité et le composant est stable.

Chocolate Eclair and Chocolate Raspberry Eclair - €5.70 Recently, for Easter, Nicolas Cloiseau created a charming collection of fish so pretty that they would be hard to eat.

And for his masterpiece, the chef prepared a 6.6 kilo (14.8 pound) "freshwater egg", measuring 51 cm tall, crossed by a school of fish.

Chocolate-making

The raw material is made from the fruit of the cocoa tree, called the pod. This fruit contains what is commonly known as the cocoa beans. The beans ferment and then dry in the sun for several days. They are roasted at a temperature ranging from 100 to 150 degrees Celsius (212°-302° Farenheit). The beans are then crushed, sweetened, and mixed with a cocoa butter. First, the heart of the candy is made (ganache, praline, almond paste...). To make a ganache, cream is heated, given a flavor, and mixed with the chocolate, which is then whipped. The ganache should not cool too much. It is poured onto marble tables and then smoothed out and cut into two with a tool called a guitar, with a bladed comb. It is coated with chocolate, which is poured onto the candy, then then decorated by hand. Be careful, do not conserve after 30 days. Enjoy!